‘Unleashing the potential of e-philanthropy’
Position paper for Oxford Internet Institute policy forum
14th April 2010
ByBeth Breeze, Centre for Philanthropy, University of Kent
Technologies are only considered worth talking about whilst they are novel. For example, printing presses, a national postal service and the telephone were all ‘new technologies’ in their day and have all had a huge impact on the possibilities for facilitating charitable giving and philanthropy. The ‘new technologies’ at the start of the 21st century will become normalised in time and once they are replaced by even newer technologies, may become as little worth commenting on as the wonder of the telephone is today. Therefore apreliminaryquestion is whether we are in fact concerned with dealing with novelty per se, rather than its particular manifestation in the internet and the associated opportunities and challenges for philanthropic giving that are presented by the recent creation of the Web?
But my mainposition is that new technologies (whether printed matter or websites) cannot make us more generous, they can only make it easier for us to act upon generous impulses.As a social scientist I believe that people’s actions are shaped by external social forces to a larger degree than any internal impulses and, as it is easier to change the context for giving than it is to change levels of generosity, the key issue is how the internet can lower the ‘barriers to entry’ into the philanthropic market for both charities and potential donors.
Many charities seem to have grasped the potential of the web as a ‘shop window’ for their work, but they oftenfail to translate ‘shoppers’ into ‘buyers’. Simple steps such as having prominent ‘donate here/now’ boxes, ensuring it takes a minimal number of clicks to process a donation and providing reassurance to donors that their contribution has been safely and gratefully received, could help to realise the potential of the web as a fundraising tool.
Many donors, especially from younger generations, expect to interact with charities in a multi-media way, just as they communicate with their friends in multiple ways: in person, on landline and mobile phones and by email and on social networking sites. Charities need to relax their internal walls and integrate the parts of their organisation that produce different types of donor communication and donor care, in order to ensure a seamless ‘donor experience’. The decision to donate with cash, direct debit, a text donation, onlineor however, should not result in the donor being placed in a box marked ‘cash giver’, ‘online giver’ etc , not least because the transaction channel may differ from the solicitation channel (eg.a donor may give online as a result of receiving a piece of direct mail in the post). Yet direct mail and online fundraising are often run by different departments, that have their own budget and staff. These silos neglect the fact that the donor should be at the heart of the relationship, rather thantheir chosen (and quite likely changeable) vehicle for giving.
Recent research[1] from the US has highlighted inter-generational differences in engaging with online fundraising: a fifth (19%) of Generation X (born 1965-1980) and a quarter (27%) of Generation Y (born 1981-1991) were found to begin their engagement with a charity by visiting its website, whereas older donors were found to be more likely to initiate contact with a donation, often in response to a piece of direct mail. However donors of all ages were found to ‘channel hop’, switching between different sources of online and offline information and making donations through online and offline methods at different times. The prevalence of channel hopping means that charities must invest in maintaining multiple channels for donors to interact with the charity. Channel hopping also makes it much harder to assess the merits of different channels, as the trigger for the donation may not be obvious in the format of the received gift (for example, when a website is consulted before a cheque is posted or a charity is written into a will). Charities are keen to know the ROI (return on investment) of different fundraising strategies so they can maximise the effectiveness of funds spent on recruiting and retaining donors, yet the multi-channel world makes it very difficult to judge ROIs..
Online social network such as Facebook and Twitter may play a different role than the one expected – many people are trying to work out how to fundraise using social media, yet it may be that the role of ‘digital water coolers’ is more about disseminating information and enthusing potential donors, who then make their donation by more traditional methods.
A penultimate thought is that the technologies that are currently new do offer an opportunity to remove the unhelpful dividing line that currently exists between ‘ordinary donors’ and ‘major donors’.Every supporter of a charity would like to enjoy the kind of donor care that is currently the prerogative of the biggest donors, such as having some control over how their money is spent (witness the popularity of the ‘buy a goat’ phenomenon), receiving feedback on what their gift actually achieved and being known and appreciated in some meaningful sense by the organization that they support.The technology now exists that enables fundraisers to offer major donor level stewardship to all donors. But it will take commitment, vision and creativity from fundraisers to implement this. At the moment, many fundraisers don’t even offer major donor service to their major donors, far less the rest.
Finally, I would support the suggestion that new channels for giving are only as good as the messages they carry. People give to causes that inspire and excite them, and that have some resonance with donors’ lives. New technology can make it easier to give, but it does not fundamentally affect the importance of inspiring and engaging donors. As the Convio report says, “The most clever and savvy multichannel effort will fall flat if your audience is not moved or inspired by what you are saying”.
[1] Convio/Edge Research (2010) The Next Generation of American Giving: A study on the contrasting charitable habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures